Fiction Reviews
Opposite World
(2025) Elizabeth Anne Martins, Flame Tree Press,
£20 / Can$34.95 / US$26.95, hrdbk, 325pp, ISBN 978-1-787-58960-5
I’m beginning to expect Flame Tree Press to hit me with something quirky and different. They don’t always hit the mark, but when they do they’re edgy, thoughtful and engaging, with stories from writers who may not be too familiar but often have an interesting take on the world.
Opposite World, the second novel from Elizabeth Anne Martins (Dry Lands was her first), fits neatly into that pattern. It’s an articulate near-future Black Mirror-style take on loss and memory in a high the thriller package. Pip’s mother dies and she’s brought up by her father in a backwoods cabin in Washington State. She’s shielded from tech – no computers, no internet – though it becomes clear her father used to work in IT. But as she gets older, gets married and moves out, the world that her father was trying to protect her from comes crashing in. Specifically, he tells her to avoid The Reverie Cloud: a virtual reality programme designed to tap into past memories. But it turns out to be much more than that. Inevitably, Pip is sucked in, looking for answers about her mother’s death, and finds herself in great danger. Plus there’s a blurring of reality and memory until Pip finds she really can’t trust either.
On one level it’s a thriller, because Pip’s the key to something lost and it’s important, to her father at least, that that stays lost. So there’s a bad guy (Victor) a chase, a fight and all the usual thriller stuff. On another level, it’s another warning about new technology and maybe a nod to the frustrations and addictions of the virtual world. But at the heart of the story, at the heart of every good story, is character, and Pip’s growth throughout the novel is central to its success.
And it does succeed. The writing is very rich but readable and the narrative reaches a satisfying but mildly unexpected conclusion. The pacing’s a little uneven and I wasn’t sure about the extended epilogues but it held my interest throughout, though some of the time jumps and memory fragments were disorientating. Also there was a character tor two I couldn’t quite see the point of – the husband, Farley, for instance, who was both unconvincing and unnecessary. But Pip’s compulsion to uncover the truth and her dive down a dangerous rabbit hole are strong drivers of tension and suspense, and the positives far outweigh the negatives. It’s quite cinematic too – I can see this being picked up by one of the streamers.
Mark Bilsborough
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